Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This is a seductive, velvety wine, with a great depth of flavor and a balanced approach. Forest floor, black tea and black cherry highlight a well-integrated and complex palate. It shows nuance and length, finishing on a whisper of coffee bean.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2019 Pinot Noir Tilton Hill is a bigger, richer wine offering loads of spice, licorice, scorched earth, and black raspberry. Nicely textured, medium-bodied, and concentrated, it shows more mid-palate density and opulence than most in the lineup yet still stays lively and fresh.
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James Suckling
Attractive aromas and flavors of sweet berries, dried strawberries and wet earth. Full and rich with layers of ripe tannins. Juicy. Drink or hold.
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Wine Spectator
Open-textured, with a juicy richness to the dark cherry and plum tart flavors, which are supported by firm acidity and tannins. This has subtle tea and cola accents that linger on the fresh finish. Drink now through 2026.
The Sonoma Coast AVA is large in area but, not counting overlapping regions like Russian River Valley, only has a few thousand acres of grapevines—and it’s no wonder. Much of the region is rugged and not easily accessible. Its proximity to the Pacific Ocean’s fog and cool breezes limits the varieties that can be cultivated, but it proves to be an ideal environment for high quality Pinot Noir.
Since fog is a frequent fact of life here, as are heavy marine layers that sometimes bring rain, the best vineyards are wisely planted above the fog line, on picturesque ridges that capture enough sun to provide even ripening. That, with the overnight drop in temperature that reliably preserves acidity, results in fine expressions of Pinot Noir that often receive tremendous critic and consumer praise alike, and are often in high demand.